This Blog is a part of my media social experiment. Comments, suggestions and questions are welcome (vv.free.physics@gmail.com). For the specific lists of posts use links on the right. For consulting services of Education Advancement Professionals visit www.GoMars.xyz. Thank you for visiting, Dr. Valentin Voroshilov.

BTW: even in politics the amount of money does not guarantee the result!

Reforming education of a large country is not an ordinary problem.

One cannot solve an extraordinary problem using standard means.New type of solutions start from rethinking the old paradigm. It requires time, effort, imagination, and willingness to reject well-established views.

In times like that people with well-established views may become an impedance, an obstacle.

Some of the most amazing breakthroughs in business have been done by the outsiders in the field, or by the people on the fringe. Everyone can offer many examples, but my personal favorite is Netflix, because it also demonstrates the devastating effect of a short-vision (a.k.a. Blockbuster). A searcher for a new paradigm should attract, embrace, be looking specifically for people which views are outside of the mainstream opinions. There is however a methodological problem – in the flow of ideas pouring down from all over the world, how to separate strange/unusual/counter-intuitive but promising ideas from truly foolish/crazy/irrational ones? There is no scientific answer to this question. However, what usually helps is looking at the professional or personal history of the author (there are different approaches based on the Activity Theory, which in part have been used in education: http://www.teachology.xyz/pd.htm).“In my whole life, I have known no smart people” who didn't question themselves. My best teachers and mentors deliberately demonstrated that they did not know everything, and taught us how to deal with our limitations. Logical disagreements were embraced. A good teammate should have been smarter that we were! Inside the team, when with each other, we were as open as it was possible (but when needed to defend the team, we would present the united front). I believe, in any professional field, this type of professional relationship is the most fruitful for a team aiming at making a breakthrough.

People with well-established views may become an impedance, an obstacle, but people with no knowledge in the field may be pushing towards disastrous actions. How to solve this conundrum?

Well,searching for solutions of a new type always starts from rethinking the old paradigm, which starts from reading, and writing, and talking with each other. However, it is not about being different from others, it is about accepting a possibility of being wrong; it is not about convincing others to agree with you, it is about asking others to find mistakes in your own thinking - people with such an attitude make the most creative teams. Please, read some of the posts indicated below, and feel free to point at all the mistakes you find in them, as well as in this post! In my reflection on "Backpack Full of Cash": http://www.gomars.xyz/cash.htmlI write: “speaking about Bill Gates and other billionaires trying to reform education; the biggest problem they have (among many other) is how other people perceive them. For many people Bill Gates (for example) is (a) a guru and they take his every word without any doubt; or (b) a nice-to-hangout-with-celebrity; or (c) simple a "cash cow" who is "always right" as long as he gives money. I would like to ask Mr. Gates, how many times since his installation of his foundation, after giving a speech he would heard back: "No, that's not gonna work"? (an example of a conversation with a mogul: http://www.teachology.xyz/aiedu.html).”

Mr. Gates wants to achieve drastic changes in education as a whole. When a large system experiences a systemic change, a physicist calls it “a phase transition”.

If the system is social, the systemic change is called “a revolution”.

Like phase transitions in physics, social revolutions also have different types; not all of them are bloody (fortunately!); but all of them follow a similar pattern.

In order for a transition to happen, a system needs to pass through at least two distinctive stages:

1. The old state of a system should be weakened in some sense (which depends on the system); usually there is at least one parameter – the transition parameter (like, magnetization, or core beliefs), such that the all parts of the system had the same value of that parameter, but now different parts of the system can have different values, which also change in time (one says that the system exhibits strong fluctuations in its order – in space and in time). This stage is defined as the stage when the chaos in the system increases.

For a social system, such stage may be seen as reached, when people in many different cities and towns begin sporadically (a.k.a. randomly, chaotically) gather together to express themselves, to demonstrate their dislike or demand, or support to some ideas or people (often, completely incoherent, or even opposite).

However, the presence of the chaotic stage does notguaranty the presence of a transition to a new state.

For example, “Occupy Wall Street” did not lead to any structural change, neither social, nor political.

2. To finish the transition into a new state, the system has to undergo through another stage, when a new ordered state is emerged from the previously chaotically disturbed state. That means that all parts of the system should achieve a new stable state with a new – but the same for all parts of the system – value of the transition parameter.

There are two possible outcomes: the transition to a new state may not happen, and the transition to a new state may happen. However, there are four possible final stages.

(a) The transition did not happen – the system as a whole goes back to the original state (“Occupy Wall Street”).

(b) The transition did not happen – some parts of the system may go back to the original state; other parts may transit to a new state (or states; e.g. dissolution of USSR).

(c) The transition happened due local interactions, which led to local correlations, i.e. when neighboring parts of a system gradually balanced out with each other; this process usually is very long.

(d) The transition happened due to global correlations, e.g. due to an external field (“mass medium”, or “mass media”) applied to the whole system at the same time (watch a short video for an example: https://youtu.be/OwzKlFpIt_E).

In his speech, Bill Gates repeated the general sentiment of every philanthropist: “The role of philanthropy … is … to fund pilots, to fund new ideas, to let people … try them out and see what really works super well and get those to scale.”

This approach is not new, it has been used for decades, and so far,

it has not led to systemicchanges in education.

The reason for not leading to a systemic change is that this approach does not go further than the first stage. This approach helps to create a “chaotic” state, when people at different locations can try different ideas.

Which is great!

But this approach does not lead to a formation of a new state.

Which is completely different from another big Gates’ projects, like eradicating poliomyelitis.

The difference is simple.

One project leads to a transition from a clear state “the world with polio”, to a clear state “the world without polio.”

The goal is tough, difficult to achieve, but measurable.

On the contrary, the “goal” of

“Every student should get a great public education and graduate with skills to succeed in the marketplace”

is not measurable.

This statement does not describe a goal; it describes a wish, a dream.

Having a dream, a vision, is great! A dream helps to establish a general direction for the future actions.

One can see a big shift in Gates’ approach to reforming education; from pouring millions into charter schools and essentially abandoning regular public schools, he finally turns to public education as a whole, which means he acknowledges the core role of public schools.

However, he does not know yet what specifically does he want to achieve. The hope is, that in the pursuit of the dream, the view of the goal will be gradually becoming clearer and clearer.

Gates is not alone in his fuzziness on the path to the new state of educational system. All other philanthropists use their money in exactly same way as he is: i.e. supporting local initiatives.

They give generously via or to different charities.

But they do not investtheir money into large scale educational projects.

Because they do not know how to state a specific goal.

Because they do not know how to assess if the result has been achieved.

I
am not an idiot or a reckless person. The reason I can allow myself
writing what I think, even if that is perpendicular to commonly adopted
and conventional views, is that my financial situation is sufficient and
stable. Of course, as a normal person, I wouldn't mind making more money, or being involved in more interesting projects (as described in my generic resume). But I do not have to pretend to be someone I'm not to make my living.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

In
Physics there is an object called a prototype (or a standard, or an étalon).

It
has enormous importance in physics, in science, and in life in general, because based on a prototype scientists and engineers
make simpler, cheaper, and in large quantities copies of the prototype and use
them to make consistent and accurate measurements, the result of which does not
depend on by whom and where that measurement was made. A prototype ensures uniformity
of the measures across human practices and professional fields.

But
not in education.

Education
has no prototypes.

That
makes the field of education virtually immeasurable, hence, non-scientific.
Education research is not an actual scientific research establishing strong
correlations between well-defined parameters, but an exploration, similar to a geographer
exploring a new territory and writing letters with the description of the
discoveries he/she made (or a botanist or zoologist describing new species they found).

This
state of affairs, however, can be changed, and the company or institution that pioneers
the transformation from an exploration to a scientific research will dominate
the market of educational practices for years ahead.

Preface.

Everyone who pays even slight attention to news about education knows about the continuous battle between supporters and opponents of charter schools, voucher schools, and other non-traditional educational entities.

Unfortunately, that clouds of the battle cover one of the biggest issues of the contemporary education, which is a significant insufficiency of fundamental theoretical and technological innovations (countless startups promoting their apps or gadgets do not make any difference in the field; a serous new type of scientific infrastructure is badly needed ASAP; http://www.teachology.xyz/30uS.html). The main reason for this insufficiency is not the lack of the resources, but the lack of a broad collaboration between various professional and scientific groups. Remember the tail about blind men and an elephant?

This is the current state of science of education.Education needs its own “Manhattan Project”, or “Apollo Program” (Five Projects Critical For Education). The
approach to advancing education in general and science of education in
particular has to follow the approach developed in the oldest and the
most successful science - physics. The field of education needs projects
and institutions similar to the Large Hadron Collider - a collaboration
of experimentalists and theorists and administrators and philosophers
from many countries all over the world.Large scale changes require systemic approach. As an analog to the Large Hadron Collider or to the Institute for Advanced Study the field of education needs PILT.This approach would allow to reexamine the well-established paradigms, and would guide a broad search for new connections and correlations; which would combine newly presented advances in artificial intelligence with neuroscience to study and analyze multi-layered universe of individual, group, and institutional learning and teaching; which would bring in education newly developed technologies, including AI, virtual reality, augmented reality, top level robotics.

This type of a program can be initiated via institutionalizing a collaboration between various professional and scientific groups by establishing a specific institution –an Institute for Learning and Teaching (the name is tentative, of course).

Within this Institute, professionals from various universities, intuitions, and companies would be able to join their effort and expertise.

Below one finds an illustration to the description of such an Institute.

The description below is basically a copy of the beautiful description of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (https://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/about/about-perimeter). That description is so good, I just simply replaced words “theoretical physics” with word “education”, or words “learning and teaching” (and added a couple of statements); but it gives a very good idea of what the description of the new Institute could be.

Perimeter Institute for Learning and Teaching (PILT)

ABOUT PERIMETER

Perimeter Institute is a leading center for scientific research, training and educational outreach in foundational and experimental educational methods, techniques, and technologies. Its mission is to advance our understanding of the learning and teaching processes, and to use that understanding for stimulating the breakthroughs that could transform the education. Perimeter also trains the next generation of educators through innovative programs, and shares the excitement and wonder of science with students, teachers and the general public.

We believe breakthroughs are realized through a collision of intellect,

imagination and inspiration.

MISSION

Perimeter Institute for Learning and Teaching is an independent, resident-based research institute devoted to foundational issues in the field of education at the highest levels of international excellence. We strive to create a lively and dynamic research atmosphere where many approaches to fundamental questions, both orthodox and unorthodox, are pursued simultaneously and where a balance between formal and phenomenologically-oriented research is established. We are determined to collaborate constructively with the surrounding academic community, in particular by creating outstanding educational and research opportunities for graduate students. We are equally determined to create a world-class outreach program which conveys the wonder and mystery of the universe and the importance of future scientific breakthroughs, to the general public in New England and beyond.

VISION

Perimeter’s vision is to create the world’s foremost center for foundational and experimental educational methods, techniques, and technologies, uniting public and private partners, and the world’s best scientific minds, in a shared enterprise to achieve breakthroughs that will transform our future.

WHAT WE RESEARCH

Scientists at Perimeter Institute forge new, mind-bending ideas about the ultimate nature of human intelligence, from fundamental grains of learning to essential acts of teaching. At Perimeter, we reexamine the well-established paradigms, and search for new connections and correlations. We use newly presented advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience to study and analyze multi-layered universe of individual, group, and institutional learning and teaching. We bring in education newly developed technologies, including AI, virtual reality, augmented reality, top level robotics.Since Learning and Teaching represent the highest levels of Intelligence, our "International Magazine for Study Intelligence" publishes work on all aspects of Intelligence: animal and human, biological and artificial.

FUNDING

Perimeter is supported through an innovative public-private partnership – which unites government, individuals, corporations, and foundations in a shared venture to enable scientific breakthroughs, nurture scientific talent, and share scientific discovery with the broader public.

I would like to congratulate President Brown and all us with launching Innovate@BU - a huge step ahead in the University development, which makes it on par with MIT’s Media Lab, and Harvard’s i-Lab.

We all know how profoundly big impact on a society can have an innovative device, design, or an application.

But the most important and lasting effect comes from the growing number of innovators and inventors fostered and thriving in the nurturing and supportive environment.

This initiative may have even broader impact if it spills out outside of Boston University. Our elementary, middle, and high schools also need to employ teaching strategies which encourage and cultivate innovativeness of students. Unfortunately, the study and development of such strategies is in the very basic stage (http://www.gomars.xyz/nsf.html). That is why for quite some time I have been trying to convince our Administration and the Board to establishing Boston University Institute for Learning and Teaching. An initial description of the mission of the Institute is available below.

My hope is that finally, after launching Innovate@BU our Administration and the Board will have their hands free for the next truly big and innovative initiative. The history of science and business development shows that pioneers in research and development are usually rewarded the most. However, in the end, having innovative approaches to education unpacked, explored, and flourished is more important than the place from where they are originated. That is why I am sending in the open the idea of the Institute for Learning and Teaching.

Way too many people have a very trivial (primitive) view about teaching. They think that teaching is merely "do what I say" action. If that would be enough, everyone could become a good teacher - which is not a case at all. In "The Fundamental Laws of Teachology" I presented several short statements about the substance of teaching and learning. In this post I present an extended version of my view.What is
teaching?

Below is the
quote from Google search on: “what is teaching” (the top answer):

The second
meaning of “teaching” is transparent: “teaching is a synonym for philosophy”.
But the first description does not really say much what teaching is. “Teaching
is what a teacher does”.

Everyone
wants to be healthy and successful and no one wants to be ill and poor. The
only difference is how we want to achieve our success. There are people who use
other people as a tool for climbing the social ladder. I would not recommend
people like that going into teaching. Children feel when they are being used
and always find the way to escape – one way or another. Anyone who wants to be
a teacher (or an educator of some sort), should do it to help children to
succeed in their life, and they will return the success.

Teaching is
an important human practice. Many people think that teaching is simply telling
students “do as I say”. This very approach is built in our DNA. Our parents
used this approach when teaching us. Animals use this approach when teaching
cubs, pups, baby birds (they rather use the “do as I do” version, which is also
very popular among humans).

If teaching
was indeed merely “do as I do” or “do as I say” practice, then of course
everyone could do it! Teaching would not be much different from training
animals (“a stick and a carrot” would do the trick).

Clearly,
teaching is something more complicated than just “do as I say”. Not everyone
can become a good teacher. Everyone can cook at home, or drive a car. But not
everyone can become a successful chef or a race-car driver. And when we say this
out loud, it does not sound controversial – because it’s obvious! Yes, we know
that some people are a better fit for some practices than others, and some
people are not a good fit for some practices. In particular, some people are
just not fit to be teachers (which is not their fault), and one of the goals of
every teacher preparation program should be identifying those people and
helping them to find another professional path.

So, what is
teaching, or, what does it mean to be a teacher?

I think that
the answer to this question forms a fundamental basis for the whole
professional philosophy of a teacher and for the practice built on that
philosophy. One of the first indicators of a true teacher is that he or she has
a certain answer to this question. I also believe that there is no single
correct answer to this question. I believe that every teacher should search for
and find his or her own answer (although the answers might sound very
similarly).

In this
essay, I want to share my answer to the question “what is teaching?”.

To me, teaching is
guiding students through a specifically designed set of learning experiences
(a.k.a. student activities) to help them to develop or advance desired skills
and knowledge – this is my formal definition of teaching (hence, a teacher is a
person who teaches in accordance with this definition; this link leads to short
statements about teaching which I call “Laws of TeachOlogy”; http://www.cognisity.how/2016/12/handbook.html).

A teacher
might not be the one who designs the whole set of student activities, but
should have a deep understanding of the reasons for the activities and measures
of the success or failure of the activities.

We all know the old saying that one can bring a horse to
water but one cannot make it drink. Well, a teacher cannot make a student learn
unless that student wants to learn. Unfortunately, too often students start to
learn only to avoid some kind of punishment. This kind of teaching might happen
when a teacher does not care much about students, but just functioning to avoid
being fired (mimicking/faking teaching). On another hand, a teacher might be
very forceful on students (“It is for your own good”) to become being praised. I believe, no matter
what a teacher does, students should not have any psychological damage (like,
“feeling stupid”).

Teachers - like doctors – should take “a Hippocratic Oath”
of a Teacher and promise “never do harm to anyone”, because there is always
something more important in teaching than merely transmitting knowledge or
training skills. A true teacher knows the limits.

Ideally, parents should be the first true teachers.
The best gift a parent can give to a child is good habits and love for
learning. The same is true for a teacher. Look at infants and little
children – they always try things and want to learn something new! Now look at
school graduates – so many of them do not want to learn anything new anymore
(or cannot learn anything new, which is even worse). If children have lost
their curiosity and desire to learn, that only means they did not have a true
teacher in their life.

A true
teacher is not the one who just loves teaching (“do as I say”), but the one who
also loves learning. The art of teaching is based on love for education, and
passion for sharing this love (and also on the science of learning).

Every student has his or her own learning style. Every
classroom is different from another. Teaching constantly presents challenges:
students do not act the way a teacher expects, parents or officials put
pressure on a teacher. If a person cannot withstand challenges, that person
should not go into the business of education in any form; she/he is not going
to be a good teacher, or administrator or a researcher in the field.

No one is perfect. Everyone makes mistakes (the difference
is what we do after we made it). Mistakes are an inherent part of our life.
Mistakes are inevitable and unavoidable. Especially when people learn something
new. A teacher should understand that students will be making mistakes.
Learning is based on continually overcoming mistakes and learning from them. If
a student did not learn something, which he or she was supposed to learn,
chances are that it was because a teacher made a mistake. A true teacher never
stops learning (mostly because no matter how good we are there is always a room
for improvement: new students are different from the former ones, world
changes, a new year is never the same as the previous one). And a true teacher
is always open about mistakes he or she has done, even (especially!) if it
happens in front of a class.

Patience,
love of learning, understanding and accepting personal limits, genuinely caring
for students (they intuitively feel if for the teacher they are just pawns in
his/her game for personal success), constant professional development –
including, but not limited to – having deeper knowledge of the content of the
subject he or she teaches, deeper understanding of the fundamentals of the knowledge
development within a specific science (each school subject is a projection or a
simplification of a certain science), deeper understanding of the fundamentals
of the knowledge development in general, understating of human behavior in
general and behavior of a child, understanding of the fundamentals of human
learning and teaching. From a procedural point of view, the simplest model of
teaching is
“teaching = motivating + demonstrating + instructing + explaining
+ assessing”, hence a teacher should have personal qualities, knowledge and
skills which will allow to be able to motivate, demonstrate, instruct, explain,
and assess (within the limits placed by “do no harm” rule).

A true teacher is not always the one whose professional
description says so. A teacher is a person about whom other people say that
they have learned something important from that person.

There is one controversy I would also like to address. Many
people (including policy makers, parents, business representatives) think that
to be a good teacher one just needs to know the content. But, that is not true.
The content knowledge is one of many components of a good teacher, and not the
most important one. Firstly, I have met people who had excellent content
knowledge but were terrible teachers. I had professors who were at the top of
the achievement list in academia, but who could not teach at all (they were
very interesting storytellers, though). Clearly, they knew how to do difficult
science and they did it. But they could not explain what they did, and why.
Secondly, content knowledge is just a result of a certain amount of effort. Any
reasonable person who spends a reasonable amount of time can obtain content
knowledge in the amount sufficient to teaching at a reasonable level. Personal
qualities like willingness to learn till the first day of the retirement (at
least), patience, etc. are also very important for becoming a true teacher. A
teacher is - first - a person, and - second - a knowledge storage, a skill
presenter, a guide, a trainer.

What is learning?

A dictionary tells that learning is:

* the
acquisition of knowledge or skills through experience, study, or by being
taught.

*
knowledge acquired through experience, study, or being taught.

For a teacher, this definition may be a starting point for
reaching a deeper understanding of how people learn.

The first fundamental notion is that learning is a basic
need, like food, or oxygen. There is a “slight” difference, though. With no
food or oxygen, a person ceases the biological existence (a.k.a. dies).

Without learning a person ceases the social existence (the
reason for all dictators to micromanage education - they are scared of free
thinking which comes with true education). Learning - as a process and as a
result - is solely responsible for the prosperity of a society (even if the
prosperity still is very uneven).

Secondly, learning is a process; it has phases, it has
stages (that is why a college does not accept middle school graduates). Learning
stages might differ in length and difficulty, depend on many parameters
(subjective like age, race, brain development of a student; contextual – what
science is this subject about; social – culture, traditions, economics), but
they are as objective as stages in the seasons we observe every year. The
existence of these stages results in the existence of the specific patterns of
learning, which must be reflected in the specific patterns of teaching.

We cannot jump from a spring right into a winter; similarly,
we cannot jump into learning quadratic equations right after learning the
addition within a hundred (the normal process of giving a birth requires 9
months and should go through well-established phases - from an embryo to a
baby: the process of “giving a birth” to an educated person– from having no
knowledge and skills to having them - also has specific stages). If despite our
best efforts a student did not learn how to solve a quadratic equation, it
means that his/her learning path had missed in the past some of the important
stages (assuming that students’ learnability is adequate).

Thirdly, learning is a result, it is an achievement. There
are many achievements in our life, which – kind of - just happen; learning how
to walk, learning how to talk. Achievements like that happen usually in a
natural way, they do not normally require special prolonged management, do not
have to be controlled, assessed, regularly measured, at least if everything
happens as expected.

However, reading and writing, adding and subtracting,
solving equations, etc. are skills; and to learn those skills a special and
longitudinal effort is required, and hence, these skills have to be assessed.
What needs to be assessed, how, when and by whom, however, are some of the most
controversial questions of the contemporary research on education.

True
learning never happens by just watching and listening (i.e. by merely attending
lectures), it happens by doing. One can observe every cycling tour; interview
every famous racer, that will definitely help the one to understand the theory
of biking, but to learn how to ride a bicycle one has to ride a bicycle. One
can watch for hours other people swimming, but if one wants to learn how to
swim, the one has to get yourself into water and start trying. In the latter
case, it would help having around someone who could explain what one does wrong
and how to correct it (a friend screaming “you can do it, you can do it” would
not be much of a help).

Active lectures help to boost motivation, develop vocabulary,
give a perception that things are not as hard as they seem. Reading (and
watching, and listening) also helps to form a vocabulary, to strengthen some
relationships between the current knowledge and the upcoming one, to ignite
curiosity, to boost imagination, to reinforce self-discipline, to advance
mental capacities.

However, skills are only formed by doing.

For example, if the only exercise students had been doing
for 12 years is squats, they will not be good at push-ups and pull-ups. If we
want students to develop a certain skill, we have to give them an opportunity
to practice that skill (ideally – as long as they need to master it).

Our brain is acting in a way similar to how our regular
muscles act. Memorization is a mental activity very much different from
creating new images, searching for new meanings, describing new phenomena, or
developing new approach to solving a problem (during different mental
activities a brain does a different work). Hence, if for 12 years in a school
students only have been memorizing facts, it is not reasonable to expect from
the graduates an ability to think critically, or to be creative.

Thinking critically is a specific mental activity, which
requires comprehensive methodology, meticulous planning, detailed procedures,
and designated time (much more time than just memorizing and retrieving facts).

Our brain is a powerful pattern recognition machine. As soon
as it recognizes the task, it retrieves from the memory the sequence of the
actions, which has to be performed to succeed. Of course, we assume that that
particular brain is capable of storing and retrieving the information and
governing the actions required for fulfilling the task (otherwise we have to
discuss a case of learning disabilities). If a brain does not recognize the
task, we have two options: (a) the task is the same but due to some features it
is camouflaged as a different one; (b) the task is different and is really new
for the brain and the brain does not have the solution (at least in full) in its
storage.

Every teacher has to teach students to two different
practices: (a) how to perform specific tasks (the set of those tasks should be
specified by a curriculum); (b) how to create a solution to a problem which has
not been solved in the past (by that person); the latter practice, in turn,
requires a practice in making a conclusion regarding the familiarity of the
given assignment - is it the same as one from the past (a task) or different (a
problem)? Development of that skill also requires specific practice.

Teaching thinking critically (a.k.a. creatively) means
teaching how to create solutions, invent actions/procedures which have not been
presented/trained before.

In general, the answer to the question “what is learning?”
depends on the interpretation of who is asking this question. For example, one
can believe that learning is …

1. memorizing facts and
excelling in performing certain task (actions). or 2. obtaining knowledge and developing skills
which will allow to create (a.k.a. “construct” – for those who loves
constructivism, as I do) solutions to problems which have never been solved by
the person in the past. or 3. from a
procedural point of view, the simplest model of learning is

My personal
definition of learning is a combination of all the three above.

I believe
that teaching how to think critically, teaching how to create solutions to new
problems is the most important goal and the most difficult task of the
contemporary education. If a person cannot solve any new (for that person)
problem, it is hard to expect this person would generate some knowledge (or product,
or business) new to the society. However, if a person can solve problems which
he or she has not solved in the past, there is at least a chance that that
person would give us something absolutely new and unexpected (good or bad –
that is a different conversation). We should keep in mind, though, that
critical thinking cannot be learned without a solid foundation in facts and
skills.

I believe that physics represents a door into STEM education (http://www.cognisity.how/2017/01/dorrSTEM.html).
If students get confidence in physics class, they will feel confident in any
science. Physics is one of the oldest and most developed sciences, hence it has
a very clear logic and a straightforward learning methodology. Also, nowadays
physics or physics based approaches can be found far beyond physics itself, for
example, in medicine, in business and finance, even in sport (more at: http://www.cognisity.how/2016/12/learnphy.html).

What
changes does US education reform need?

Education
needs its own “Manhattan Project”, or “Apollo Program”, which would reexamine
the well-established paradigms, and would guide a broad search for new
connections and correlations; which would combine newly presented advances in
artificial intelligence with neuroscience to study and analyze multi-layered
universe of individual, group, and institutional learning and teaching; which
would bring in education newly developed technologies, including AI, virtual
reality, augmented reality, top level robotics.

This type of
a program can be initiated via institutionalizing a collaboration between
various professional and scientific groups by establishing a specific
institution –an Institute for Learning and Teaching (the name is tentative, of
course).